


Surrounded But Alone

by DustToDust



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1772773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustToDust/pseuds/DustToDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desmond's main problem has always been that he falls in love far too easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It was going to be a series of drabbles, but the drabbles looked at me and laughed. They told me I was being delusional. So I had to delete the previous work and start all over again.

It hurts. 

Every time he gets into the Animus it hurts. Not just physically --because he's become _used_ to those pains-- but mentally. All of it’s in his head anyway, so it makes sense that it’s the mental part that wears him down the most.

Desmond forces himself to breathe evenly as he opens his eyes to the white loading screen of the Animus and his heart rate kicks up automatically. It's a conditioned response by now really. See the white, know the pain is about to come.

He hates this part the most, because once he gets going in a memory it's easy to let it all go away. Easy to get caught up. The beginning is the worst though because there’s nothing to see but white space so bright it hurts his eyes sometimes. Nothing to hear but the computerized voice informing him how much of the next memory is loaded. 

_23, 24, 25-_

Nothing to feel because he’s not actually here in this white screen, and his nerves haven’t been fully connected just yet. He feels lost in the loading screen with nothing to focus on. Sensory deprivation, Rebecca had once explained how necessary it was to his synchronization. 

Desmond hadn't paid much attention to the why once he was sure it wasn't a part of the process he could skip.

With so little for his senses to focus on, Desmond’s mind tends to reach out and fill the emptiness for him. Whether he wants it to or not. The problem with his mind filling in -- _matrixing_ Lucy had once called it, though he’s sure this goes far beyond that-- the loading screen is that he’s still connected to the Animus. Even incompletely connected the machine reads as much from his brain as his DNA. So while his brain reaches out with phantom sounds and images, the Animus takes those ghosts and brings them to life.

A low buzz becomes the chatter of a market, and a dark blur becomes a crowd browsing the stalls and haggling with the merchants. The scents of Jerusalem’s market unfurl around him, and a dry wind tugs at Desmond’s hoodie as people spin around him. Taking no notice of how much he sticks out in this time with jeans and sneakers. Their eyes either not seeing him or seeing him as someone else. There’s no AI here to dictate their actions, to make or break his synchronization. They are just a moving backdrop.

It would be so easy to lose himself in this alone, but a sharp shove from behind prevents that from even being an option. “Here, make yourself useful,” Malik’s voice is familiar for all that the scene is not. Desmond grips a woven basket automatically as it’s shoved into his arms. It rattles slightly, and Desmond knows it’s already filled with ink and quills. More than the man truly needs.

Malik strides on ahead of him and the crowd does not part for him so much as accepts him as part of it. Desmond follows the man for lack of anything else to do. The Dai doesn't spare him a single glance, confident that Desmond will follow him as he glances over the items for sale. Zeroing quickly on a bread seller. His dark eyes sharp as he looks the offerings over critically. Engaging in haggling with an ease and zest that Desmond finds hard to follow. Altair had been an indifferent haggler, using his stare and obvious bulk to intimidate instead of the complicated offer and counter offers Malik engages in.

_55, 56, 57-_

This is not something that Altair ever experienced. He watched the one armed Dai on occasion, especially when Malik went out unarmed among the populace, but he’d never considered jumping down to help the struggling man with his shopping. Fearing, rightly most likely, the sharp edge of Malik’s tongue not being tempered in the least by their very public location.

Desmond takes the three loaves Malik buys for what he suspects is less than the scowling merchant wants to part with and carefully places them in the basket. Confirming the many pots of ink, and knowing that it doesn’t really matter how he stacks the bread. None of this is real, none of this actually matters. Not the crowd around him, the contents of the basket, or the calloused fingers that wrap around his wrist to pull him impatiently on to the next vendor.

Malik’s eyes are pensive when he looks back at Desmond, but they're void of any of the hate Desmond knows too well from Altair’s memories. He isn’t Altair right now, so that emotion is not for him. Not here, not now. “Keep up, Brother. We have much to gather before any idiotic Novices drop in and ruin my Bureau while we’re gone.”

His words are sharp and caustic, but he smiles as he says it. Fondly and a little wistfully.

"I don’t think they’d dare," Desmond says. Helplessly smiling back, because that smile is a rare sight. Even though it’s not real it still _sounds_ like something Malik would say. He can’t imagine anyone being stupid enough to risk messing with the Bureau and incurring Malik’s temper. Well, one person, maybe, but that man doesn’t exist right now.

Neither does Malik, but Desmond’s mind refuses to acknowledge it.

"I would rather not give them the chance, Desmond," Malik steers them towards a fruit seller and Desmond breaths through the sharp flare of pain his name --accented strangely on Malik’s tongue-- produces every time.

_73, 73, 73-_

The Animus counts down, far more slowly to him inside this false memory than it does outside to the others. They don’t see time pass the same way he does. He already knows that, and hasn’t ever been able to fully explain it to anyone --or why the time difference even matters-- in a way that doesn’t make him sound crazy.

_Crazier._

Malik lets go of him to deal with the merchant and Desmond ignores the way warmth lingers around the few inches of his skin touched. He tries not to pay too much attention to anything going on around him at all. It makes things blur around him a bit as the Animus stops trying to render so many details as intricately as it can. It pulls him out of the event enough to speed up the real memory being accessed. Just a bit.

_82, 84, 86-_

The pressure of Malik’s fingers around his wrist again pulls everything back into sharp focus despite Desmond’s efforts. The countdown slowing once more because Desmond can’t ignore this.

_87, 88, 88, 88-_

"Is the sun making you sick?" Malik is frowning but there’s concern laced all under his voice --and Desmond doesn’t know where he’s picking that up from, because he _never_ heard it in any of Altair’s memories-- as he lets go to tug the top of Desmond’s hoodie up over his head. His fingers touch Desmond’s forehead and rest there for a moment. Taking his temperature, maybe, before brushing down further. Four fingers resting against his cheek and a thumb sliding under his lips to stroke the scar Desmond forgets is there most days. "Your mind is far from here, Desmond."

Malik's voice is chiding. Rebuking him for not playing along with the scenario the Animus has set up for him.

"Sorry, I guess it is," Desmond manages to say even though there’s no sun anymore. No market, no people, not even a basket. It’s just him and Malik now in the white loading screen. All of Desmond's thoughts focused on trying to not lean into the fingers touching him. 

With nothing else to render the countdown speeds up again, and Desmond swallows hard. Because it’s both not enough time and too much as Malik keeps tracing his skin.

_97, 98, 99-_

"You must go," Malik says with a sigh, and pulls Desmond close with his hand. His face blurs and Desmond closes his eyes. Eliminating sight so all he has now is touch and the smell of ink and dust as Malik presses their foreheads together. The pressure is firm and Desmond wishes --despite himself, despite _knowing_ better-- any of this were real. "I can feel our time slipping away."

"No, you can’t," Desmond breathes out and feels a shift, and when he opens his eyes he’s alone. Venice spills out below him bright and vivid in ways Jerusalem never was, but light and unreal whereas the other city has always felt heavier and more real to him. Its borders shimmering into existence as the Animus renders the horizon and the sky. Sealing him up in a body not his own and memories not even close to the ones he wants to relive again. "You’re not real."

"What was that, Desmond?" Rebecca’s voice is distorted by the relays it has to go through to reach him in something close to real time for him in the Animus. He waits the time needed to ensure she isn’t saying anything else before responding.

"Nothing," Desmond says and pushes away the pressure of fingers on his face his mind wants to insist is still there, "what am I looking for here?"

Getting into the Animus hurts in ways he never thought possible. Ways that kill him slowly because most of the people he knows --cares for, hates, wants, _loves_ \-- aren’t just dead but never even knew him. He tries not to think about it, but thinking is all he has time for anymore and it hurts. 

Every single time.

~

It had been easy while in Abstergo custody. 

Desmond had torn through Altair’s memories quickly and with no regard at all to anything but the increasingly hostile threats from Vidic. Side trips had only been a thing used to keep his synchronization up when needed. He’d barely had time to process what he was learning along with Altair --how the man had handled it with even less time Desmond will never know-- in the few breaks Lucy managed to get him.

Desmond never thought that dizzying dive into the past had been a good thing before. Not until now does he see the benefits to it. Now that he's taking Ezio's life in at a rate that's a casual stroll as compared to the dead run of Altair's. Now that he has a solid seven hours of time blocked off each day for actually sleeping. Not to mention the breaks he gets in between memory blocks where Lucy insists he stretch his muscles and not think about anything.

Desmond is really good at not thinking about things, but the past unfortunately doesn't seem to want to let him. The Bleed Effect hits him hard, and Desmond struggles to cope with it.

He’s stretched out on an uncomfortable cot well before his scheduled bed time, the Animus defragging or something, and his mind working hard to process the memories of two very different men. His own personal defragmentation process. One that goes less smoothly than any computers.

Voice in different languages roll around in his head. Accents thick and heavy as je understands and doesn't understand them at all. The languages are embedded in him by the second day of diving, and the translation software is only needed to make things easier on the others. 

Italian, Arabic, French, English. The words sounding out in a hundred different voices, and saying too many different things for him to grab onto any one of them. The noise deafening in the silence of the small closet he took as a room, and keeping him awake when all he wants to do is sleep. 

To just forget, for a few hours, that he’s anything or anyone.

His own heartbeat pounds in his ears, not loud enough to drown anything out, as he pulls the small travel pillow tight against his ears. Futile because it's all in his head. His eyes shut tight against any vision he might see and teeth gritting to stop the shouts and pleas he wants to cut loose. _Stop, please! Just for one fucking night, shut the fuck up!_

Actually yelling won’t help, will never stop the sounds or visions. It will only get him those worried looks from the rest of the team that he hates so much. The Bleed Effect is not something he wants to deal with, and Lucy will _make_ him talk about it if he gives her a reason to worry. So Desmond grits his teeth and deals with it as best he can.

A sound winds through the voices. Not words, but an actual _sound_ that cuts the voices down by half the second he hears it. Desmond frowns and reluctantly cracks an eye open, looking at the door to see if someone’s trying to get a look in on him. Shaun, surprisingly enough, has a habit of doing the late night mom check on them all before grabbing the four hours of sleep he allows himself a night.

It's not Shaun though. The door isn’t even there when he looks. There’s only a wall covered in familiar tapestries where it should be. It’s lit by the uncertain flickering of an oil lamp, and Desmond knows before he even turns to find the source what he will see.

Malik is hunched over his often corrected map of Jerusalem, laid out on the floor of the courtyard and weighed down on each corner with a pot of different colored ink. Nose almost touching the paper as he corrects measurements and draws new buildings. He’s lost his heavy outer robes, and has a few spots of ink high on his left cheek. The scratch of a nib on paper cuts through the last of the voices in Desmond’s mind leaving him in blissful silence. For the moment at least.

Ink and dust and something too subtle for him to identify relaxes Desmond. He watches Malik work well into the night, a slight frown marring his face when he finds something that needs correcting. His right hand moving so gracefully it’s hard to imagine him ever not knowing how to exist with only one hand. 

Logically, Desmond knows that this is far worse than the auditory hallucinations. That seeing and smelling things is several orders _beyond_ what is acceptable with the Bleed Effect. He just can’t bring himself to care too much as Malik’s presence -- _not real, not here, you idiot_ \-- and scent lulls him into the sleep he was so desperate for before.

~

"Interesting," Malik glances over some of the writings left out in Leonardo’s workshop. The papers written in more languages than Desmond can even name, but apparently not so foreign to Malik who is looking at something that looks vaguely mathematical. "Is this where you spend your time, Desmond?"

"No," Desmond says and consciously avoids the uneven three legged stool that Leonardo always seems to bring with him. No matter how many times he moves his workshop, Ezio’s favored stool will always show up. It’s something Rebecca had pointed out, and Desmond’s been ignoring the very pointed commentary from all sides for that ever since. He doubts Ezio himself has even the vaguest hint of what it may or may not mean. Even with Salai making certain things so very apparent, Desmond doesn’t think Ezio will ever think too deeply on his friendship with the other man. "Not by my choice at least."

"You don’t do much on your own, do you?" Malik observes cruelly, and the words ring right along with some of the more pointed comments Shaun’s taken to slinging his way lately. The red-head’s increasing frustration with the missions he doesn’t share with the rest of the team making him even shorter tempered than Malik dealing with Altair on a bad day.

"No, I really don’t," coming from Shaun, the comments had irritated him. Coming from Malik they sting. "Not like I have much choice."

_49, 49, 50-_

"But you do have a choice," Malik’s hand drifts across one of the half-assembled models that will probably be something brilliant if the idea manages to hold Leonardo’s attention long enough to be completed. Dust floats down from his fingers showing Desmond how very unlikely that is to happen.

"Yeah, die from a bullet in the head or die from a total brain melt down," Desmond settles down on a table strewn with papers and doesn’t let himself think about what he isn’t ruining. The papers aren’t really there after all. "Some choice there."

"I did not say it was a pleasant choice, just that you _have_ one," Malik’s lips quirk up in a dark smile that makes Desmond’s chest ache a bit. It’s knowing and makes him wonder again at the time, the many months, between Solomon’s Temple and the very first time Altair visited Jerusalem. What dark thoughts Malik might have had, what choice he was given. "Too many do not have even that, Desmond."

_79, 79, 79-_

"So I should be grateful?" Desmond can taste the bitterness seeping into his words. He’s not really bitter about any of this. Not too much at least. He knows it could be worse, knows it _will_ be worse, but he’s not looking to bail out on it. Not anymore at least.

It’s just hard, sometimes, to forget how very much he wanted out of life. The things he never got to experience even after running from the Farm. The things he’s increasingly sure he never will get to experience now.

"No," Malik abandons the research and books to plant himself solidly in front of Desmond. His hand stealing around the back of Desmond’s neck to grip him tightly. To force Desmond to arch his head back and look up at him. "You should be _furious_. I was."

_95, 96, 96-_

"It doesn’t help anything though," Desmond says tiredly because he’d done that. He’d raged and bit back while Abstergo had him. Destroying what he could and only hurting himself each time Vidic got tired of dealing with his shit and called the muscle in to deal with him. Turning that on Lucy, Rebecca, and Shaun would get him even less. They’re only looking to _help_ , looking to keep him _safe_. Lashing out at them will only make him feel like an asshole.

"Then you’re a smarter man than I was," Malik chuckles and his lips brush gently over Desmond’s forehead. Benevolent and brotherly even as the hand pressing down against his neck really isn’t. "It is still your right to _feel_ though."

"Ezio! My papers!"

Desmond opens his eyes to an alarmed looking painter and grimaces as he carefully slides off the table. Ezio’s voice spewing apologies for something that might or might not have actually happened. The back of his neck is unbearably cold as Leonardo loses his alarm fast, the limited AI of the Animus smoothing the unexpected event over into what actually happened. Desmond relaxes and feels Ezio surge up to take control of his body and voice. Prompting Leonardo with a question that makes the man start to talk excitedly about a new translation that might or might not be the reason why Ezio’s here in the first place.

Desmond loses himself in Italian and wonders if he even _wants_ to feel anymore.

~

Malik is a figment of his failing mind. He's a silent specter as Desmond explores Monteriggioni, and an oddly talkative companion in the loading screen. The man pokes through the areas the Animus pulls out of Desmond's mind with obvious pleasure, and Desmond tries hard to pull out different areas just to see the man react to them.

A smile, a scowl, or an incredulous snort the one time Desmond showed him Leonardo's broken flying machine. All reactions that Desmond can't help drinking up in the too short/long loading time.

"Are you sure this Ezio is not a descendant of Altair?" Malik eyes the distance travelled with incredulous eyes. Desmond's stomach still clenches in excitement, this had been one of his favorite missions. He'd love nothing more than to revisit the memory but time's running out, and Desmond has too much of Ezio's life to go through still. "It's a suicidal route, and is what I would expect from that idiot."

"Sorry," Desmond grins and ducks under one of the wings to follow Malik.

_86, 86, 86-_

"Liar," Malik grumbles but there's a light of laughter in his eyes that Desmond drinks in because it changes the man's whole entire face. He wants to know, suddenly and fiercely, what Malik was like before Solomon's Temple. He can see it in the ghost of a mischievous smile on his face right now, and the speculative look in his eyes.

"Next time, I'll try to put us both up there," Desmond nods back to the starting tower, seen only by its beacon light. "Then you can try it for yourself."

_97, 97, 98-_

"You are mad if you think I would try this," Malik reaches out and rubs a knuckle into Desmond's hair painfully. He doesn't quite manage to hide the keen interest in his eyes though as he studies the route a little more critically.

"Liar," Desmond whispers but none of the Apprentices take notice of Ezio acting strange and Desmond falls back to let the man guide their steps.

~

He clings to Malik, and Desmond's self-aware enough to know it's not just because the man is the easiest hallucination to deal with. 

It's always been a problem for him. The way his heart decides to fall all too easily, and for the worst possible people. Without any remorse or thought to the consequences.

Desmond fell in love with Malik in Masyaf. He liked him in Jerusalem, but it was in Masyaf, his words echoing in Altair's ears, that Desmond felt his heart ache the way it always does when he realizes he's been stupid enough to let it happen again.

Malik Al-Sayf is dead, and even if he wasn't he wouldn't know a single damn thing about Desmond at all. Falling in love with him is one of the stupidest things Desmond's ever done, and he has an entire lifetime of stupid things to pick from for that title.

His brain and heart don't really care for something as irrelevant as logic. His brain continues to manipulate the Animus during load times, and his heart continues to be soothed as violent, vicious sounds give way to the calming sight of the Bureau folding around him every night. The sound of Malik working, and the scent of him as he settles into the cushions to watch Desmond sleep all he needs to relax enough to let go. His heart aching a bit more with each episode as he falls just a tiny bit more.

It's not real, none of it is, but Desmond doesn't think he can be so picky with the Bleed Effect picking up in intensity. If one of his hallucinations allows him to push through the rest? Well, a little heart ache is really a small price to pay for it. Stupid as it is, Desmond lets himself fall as far as he will.

~

"You alright, Desmond?"

Shaun's voice slices through the comfortable blanket of familiarity that had been easing him to sleep with an abruptness that leaves him cold. Desmond holds his breath and refuses to open his eyes. Holding tight to the illusion of Jerusalem's Bureau, but the silence has a waiting quality to it and Shaun will push if he feels he needs to.

He's been getting more worried lately. They all have. Desmond wonders how much his control has been slipping that he can't even pinpoint the one event that made them all start to side eye him and treat him like fucking glass.

"Yeah," Desmond concentrates to make sure he sounds tired, and that his words come out in English. Modern English because he's slipped into old English or whatever on a few occasions that had been funny at first. "'m fine."

"-alright," Shaun replies cautiously and shifts. The old floor of the once vibrant villa creak under his feet but he doesn't move closer. Desmond wonders what he was doing that'd alerted the other man that something was wrong. It must've been something really obvious because Shaun doesn't reply with his usual bite. "Well, then! Just get some sleep. You'll need it."

Desmond feels guilty at the actual honest to fuck worry he can hear in Shaun's voice --see in Lucy's eyes, and feel in the hand Rebecca carefully touches him with these days-- but there's not a whole lot any of them can do anymore. It's too late.

He rolls over and buries his face in the crook of his arm. Refusing to open his eyes as he pretends he can't smell the Bureau’s familiar scent because of his own skin. That the lack of noise is just Malik retiring for the night, because as much as the man works he's only human too.

Humans all need rest.

~

**Hush. I will do it myself.**

The words aren't spoken so much as they're blazed into his mind. Ten foot fiery letter searing his brain as he turns without meaning to, as he steps forward without wanting to. 

Desmond fights, he pulls and yells and rebels. But the words burn brighter, hotter and something breaks inside him. Pain, fresh and unlike anything he's felt before nearly drowns him as he silently screams. His own body not his own.

The Apple pulses in his hand and he hears the hidden blade snap out as Lucy stands there. Frozen and uncomprehending as someone  
something  
no  
no  
no

~

"Cogito ergo sum."

Desmond opens his eyes to the nicest blue sky he's ever seen and a sharp rock doing unfortunate things to his neck as 16 quotes Latin. 

Physics, right, Murphy's Law probably fits right in around here too. Desmond pulls himself up and blinks blearily over at 16's back. A not so uncommon sight when Desmond swims back up from the black outs the man assures him are perfectly normal reactions to bits of his shattered mind slotting back together when the Animus kicks him back.

"Oh? 'I think, therefore I am,' interesting theory," Malik answers back and there's wicked amusement dancing in his voice that lets Desmond know the man is circling around to closing some kind of verbal trap he's spent _hours_ laying out. "Are you sure about that? Just because you _are_ does not necessarily mean you _think_."

Desmond frowns because Malik is interacting with 16, and 16, going by the way his stiffens, is clearly interacting with Malik. Which shouldn't be possible, not when Desmond has so very little control over the Animus while it’s in safe mode. The fanciful renderings of his mind shouldn't _work_ here.

But Malik _is_ here, Desmond sees that when he gets to his feet. Propped up against a broken pillar and smiling a razor sharp grin at 16 who doesn't look like he knows what to make of the Dai.

"After all," Malik gestures carelessly at himself, eyes not leaving 16 even as he tilts his head towards Desmond. A silent acknowledgment that he knows they have an audience now. "If you were to actually _think_ about this you'd realize you got a few assumptions wrong."

"I'm dead," 16 crosses his arms and rolls his head on his shoulders. Cracking his neck before fixing Desmond with an accusing glare, like any of this is his fault. "I'd like to skip any more philosophical debates on existence, thanks. Had plenty of them already and it's hard enough reconciling myself as I am."

"Uh, sorry?" Desmond shrugs, not feeling the emotion particularly well, but also not wanting 16 to spiral into one of his fits of depression. They're sudden and fast, and always leave Desmond feeling pretty guilty despite the fact he has no reason to. The blame for any of this doesn't lay at either of their feet really.

"You apologize too much," Malik admonishes immediately, but he breaks his gaze from 16 and Desmond swears he feels a shit ton of tension fly out the metaphorical window. Or the literal one. The hole in the wall a few feet away could be a window if one were to squint at it. Malik looks him over from head to toe. A quick glance Desmond's seen the Dai use to assess situations, injured Assassins, and stubborn camel once. "How are you, Desmond?"

"Really?" Desmond laughs and folds himself down to sit on the ground between the two men. He rubs his hands over his face hard. Pressing into his eyes until spots of light burst across them. A psychological reaction because Desmond doesn't feel the warning ache that tells him he's doing it too hard at all. "I'm putting my _brain_ back together with the help of an insane dead man, and another dead man is asking me how I'm doing?"

"Hey! I'm perfectly sane, thank you very much! It's the rest of you that're fucking nuts. It's a valid question though," 16 interjects, and he's grinning an asshole's grin when Desmond opens his eyes to glare at him. "Hey, I don't understand," he jabs a finger in the general vicinity of Malik, " _this_ , but the man's got some intelligence to him. How _are_ you feeling, 17?"

"Peachy," Desmond doesn't understand any of this. He barely comprehends what 16's already told him. The things he's explained over and over again. Patient in a way that Desmond's not really used to anymore. 

It's just that there's so much to explain that the man can't seem to get any of it out fast enough. Words tripping over other words as he actually seems to fight himself to tell the most important things first. He's not the rambling, mostly mad lunatic Desmond got so used to hearing before. 16 is mostly coherent, but the effects of what he went through are etched deeply in him. His speeches are rapid volleys of information pushing Desmond to go faster, to mover farther without the full answers he really wants.

He turns to Malik and sighs as he's pinned by an unimpressed look. "Fine as can be considering the circumstances. You know since I started going all Exorcist and killing-"

The words lock up in Desmond's throat, and he can't quite spit them out. 16's reassurances that Lucy's loyalty had never extended to him meaningless. Mostly because the man himself seems unsure about that fact and because it was _Lucy_. 

It was Lucy god-fucking-dammnit, and he was not alright with that! Not alright with the warmth of her blood that he can still feel covering his left hand. The compulsion of Juno's will driving his body with cold certainty of what _she_ was doing as his mind screamed and tore itself into smaller pieces trying so desperately to _stop_. To save her.

"Lucy stopped being an Assassin the day she told _them_ who she was," 16's voice cuts through the thoughts that never fail to make Desmond actually feel as broken as he is. He's not looking at him or Malik, and Desmond wonders what it must have been like. To find out your guaranteed ticket out of the hell of the Animus was a forgery. "She sold you out with the same friendly smile she used to save you."

It's hard to reconcile that though. Hard to put her in the same category as Vidic when she'd defended him so fiercely. When it's her blue eyes he sees behind his eyes. Filled with surprise, shock, incomprehension, and --at the very end as she choked on air and Juno released him-- betrayal.

Calloused fingers slide through his hair and Desmond didn't even know his eyes were closed until he opens them and sees Malik crouched before him. Eyes dark but there isn't condemnation or forgiveness in them. Just an awful kind of understanding.

"It's never easy accepting that those you trusted most would betray you in any way," Malik's eyes are far away and Desmond knows that this fact alone accounted for a great deal of the man's anger toward Altair. 

Malik's lips quirk up wryly and he focuses his gaze back on Desmond, hand dropping to cradle the back of his head. "Even when it comes from someone you _expect_ treachery from it can be hard to accept. It was not until I was thrown in chains that I believed-"

Malik breaks off with a sigh and a shake of his head. He pulls back, and Desmond feels bereft. Desmond licks his lips and asks, "What are you talking about?"

Because there's more than just the mission that lost him his arm and brother being spoken about right now. Desmond learned to read between the lines as a bartender, and Malik isn't really being subtle with that fact.

"I'm sure you will see that sorry episode soon enough," Malik deflects easily, with a short cutting gesture of his hand that means he's done with something. It's how he used to end all his arguments with Altair. A brutal move lacking only the deadly knife needed to turn it from a threat into an action. "You do well as it is. It shouldn't be much further along now."

16 is gone. Fucked off who knew when. Probably after he mentioned Lucy. That's the one story the man hasn't been willing to share with him at all, and Desmond remembers the way Lucy's eyes would dim every time he tried pressing her for more information on 16. 

There's too many stories running through Desmond's mind and he willingly lets that one go.

The island is as it always is, there's no change that he can see though 16 says it changes all the time. Malik doesn't appear to be going anywhere, and, for once, there's no countdown limiting his time. Desmond wants to take the time offered, wants to spend some of it here. Relaxing without being assaulted by another's memory.

Malik stands and his face is stern, no doubt reading Desmond all too well. "You have things to do, Desmond, and not much time left to do it in."

"I know," Desmond climbs back up to his feet and turns toward the only exit he's been shown. "But I can want a bit of a break every now and then, right?"

A hard hand plants itself between his shoulder blades, and Desmond lets himself be pushed. He's on the edge of tipping into Ezio's body when Malik speaks. Distant like he's miles away as Desmond's senses shut down in prep for the memory. "You can want to be a lazy ass, yes. Just as I can and _will_ beat you for it."

Desmond doesn't feel the shove that has him running over roofs in Ezio's body, the shouts of guards ringing in his ears, but he knows it happens and it makes him smile.

"Are you having fun now, Ezio?" Yusuf laughs from beside him as an arrow embeds itself just shy of his running feet. Ezio runs and jumps off a ledge, twisting enough to send a few deadly knives behind them. The smile stays on Ezio's face as Desmond laughs silently.

~

16 and Malik play chess, and Desmond wonders if they both exist when he's not here to see them. 16, he's mostly sure, does, but Malik is harder to pin down. The man is a hallucination pulled straight from his brain, and shouldn't exist without Desmond's direct input.

It says a lot about his state of mind that Desmond isn't sure that Malik might not be the sanest part of him right now, and that is why he's there when Desmond claws his way back to consciousness.

Neither man really acknowledges him as Desmond sinks down to sit next to them. He's exhausted from what the latest Memory Seal showed Ezio, and he's not up for trying to push further for the Nexus Synch he needs to get out.

"Check," Malik says as he moves one of the pieces into place. Desmond doesn't know much about chess at all, and can't tell which one. It also doesn't help that their chess set is made up of rocks and chips from various places on the island. Ones that only the two men know the meaning of because Desmond had been watching Sofia through Ezio's eyes at the time they'd scrounged them up.

Ezio's growing infatuation with the pretty young woman is a well-worn habit by now to Desmond. He falls in love almost as often as Desmond does. Though he at least has the ability to let that love go when it hurts too much.

16 studies the scratched out board on the ground before his shoulders slump in defeat. He reaches down and flips one of the larger rocks onto its side. Probably the king. "I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to have all the advantages in games like this."

"I have had a long time to play," Malik sits back and looks over the island. Desmond stares hard at the way the muscles of his neck move as he twists his head back. 

Malik is young and healthy for all that he doesn't have his left arm. He's decades away from the gaunt figure Altair had lifted all too easily, cracked lips spilling apologies that were never needed. He's nothing like the blood stained burlap sack that had been Abbas' 'gift' to Altair that had made the man nearly break. Maria and Malik's deaths, so close together, had rattled Altair. Had rattled _Desmond_.

Desmond knew that Malik was dead. It had never been a thing he ever questioned, but to actually see it? To know how and when? To know the events that had led up to it?

"I need a break," Desmond curls up on his side between them as they reset the game. Even though this is not his real body, he hurts in a way that he's not used to. Both Altair and Ezio are older men now, and their bodies don't move as fluidly as Desmond is used to. They take hits more often and without Rebecca to monitor his pain receptors Desmond is really feeling it.

It adds onto the stabbing pain in his chest and Desmond wants to sleep a bit. To forget just enough so he can push on and get this over with.

He moves so that his head rests near Malik. On his left side so there are no fingers free to reach down and card through his hair, but Malik shifts just enough to press the side of his leg against him. 16 snickers something that Desmond chooses to ignore in favor of a nap. Just a brief one as he focuses on the heat of Malik's living --but not, never really alive again-- body next to him.

~

"Will it all go away?" Desmond asks and 16 smirks at him when he almost stumbles over the question. "The Bleed Effect?"

"Most of it, yeah, should go away. The abilities, the muscle memory will stay. Might change a bit, but they'll stick with you because it's in your blood not your mind," 16 shudders. Appearing half an inch to the right before he's back in place. Pixels blurring before resolving into a form that's solid again. Desmond wonders if he does that on purpose or if he's even aware of it. He lets the question go when 16 doesn't try to pretend not to know what Desmond's really asking, "Malik though? Gonna be honest here, 17, I don't know what the hell he is. So I kinda doubt you'll be getting rid of your boyfriend that easily."

"He's a hallucination," Desmond states because Malik isn't here now, and Desmond doesn't think he'll show up again for a bit.

"A shared one?" 16 cocks his head and gives him a skeptical look. "I'm not from Altair's bloodline, I never even knew the guy existed as more than ancient history until you got dropped in here. I know the two of us aren't all that good up here," 16 taps his forehead with a bright grin, and a light that isn't quite madness in his eyes, "but I don't think either of us was ever bugfuck crazy enough to start sharing breakdowns now."

"Then what is he?" Desmond asks, himself more than 16, because the man already answered that question. It's disturbing to think about, that Malik might not just be a figment of his mind, but every other option he can think of are all worse. Far worse.

"I don't know, I just don't know," 16 shudders again and slowly blinks out of existence. Going off to do his thing so Desmond can complete a bit more of the memories left. "Not my problem really. Guess that's one truth that's going to be all on you."

~

Malik is waiting for him in the loading screen. There's no setting or props pulled up automatically for them, and Desmond isn't surprised to see him. Even if he had been dreading the possibility he wouldn't see the man again. 

"How did-" Malik frowns and it takes effort for him to open his mouth again. "How did Altair die?"

 _I don't know what the hell he is._ Desmond sits down on the white floor and watches things half-form in the distance before collapsing. There's no countdown, Rebecca's tinkering with her Baby and warned him she was taking some features offline for a bit.

Malik knew he was dead before Desmond did. He knew the memories he was going to see up to a certain extent. Knew what Abbas had done before Desmond even saw the memories of Al Mualim's cremation.

"He was tired, he sat down and closed his eyes," Desmond remembers trying to resist the pull of that chair. The way it had felt so inviting to Altair's tired body. He'd fought it hard, knowing that it was the end for the Grandmaster and not wanting to give into the inevitable like Altair had. "He didn't open them again."

Ezio, too had gone that way. Though far more reluctantly than Altair had. The sight of Sofia and Flavia a comfort as much as a regret to him in his final moments as he lost his brief struggle to remain for them.

Gentle ends for men who led violent lives. A rarity among Assassins.

"I see," Malik says and there's honest grief in his voices as he bows his head. "He must have hated growing so old."

Altair had been exasperated by the failings of his body. His mind knowing what he used to be capable of, but his body unable to comply. It had frustrated him more when Maria was still alive. Her sharp laughs at his grumblings an easy balm that he deliberately looked for. After her death Altair had been more accepting of his limits. He'd been so very tired he could do little else but accept them.

Desmond doesn't voice any of that to Malik though. Not when the man reaches out and grips his shoulder hard. Eyes soft and grieving for a friend who has been dead for hundreds of years already. Someone as different from the old man who had settled down on that chair in a nearly empty vault, as the arrogant Assassin who had abandoned two Brothers to death from the Altair Malik is remembering right now.

It's almost a relief when Malik fades and is replaced with forests that seem endless, and a silence unbroken by any man as Connor's linear mind keeps them both on track.

~

"His name was Clay," Desmond says after the Animus glitches. Throwing him out of Connor's memories and back to the loading screen. 

_99, 01, 02-_

Good as her Baby is, Rebecca's Animus is always hell to get warmed up in a new setup. The Temple has all the room they need to spread out and hook up as many wires as she wants, but the glitches always kick in hardest the first day. 

Normally, they'd wait for the machine to work through it on its own, but time is at a premium these days and interrupted progress is still progress.

"I know," Malik is studying the path of an eagle as it wheels over a still lake. The forests of Connor's youth spread out below them in a sight that's still breathtaking to see today. As long as you face one particular way and ignore the light pollution coming from a city to the South. "He told me while you were away once."

"He never told me," Clay had been amused, bitterly but still amused by the fact that no one had told Desmond who he was. Even after Desmond had woken up, no one had wanted to say anything. Shaun had given him what little he knew about Clay, but Shaun has always believed that information should be never be hidden. "He gave me his memories."

_55, 55, 54-_

Encoded and neatly partitioned already to slide right in next to Altair and Ezio. No threat at all of bleed over to Desmond. Just a neatly organized life put together in a way that Desmond has come to realize is the man's slightly demented humor at work.

He'd wanted Desmond to know him, to know what he'd done. Clay had wanted to make a difference and he wanted to be remembered for it, but he'd be damned if he didn't make Desmond work a little for it first. The labyrinth turns of Clay's memories chase him to sleep these days. The comfort of the Bureau something Desmond only sees in the Animus now.

"He said we're the sum of our own memories. That it's our story that makes us who we are," Desmond muses on the words that've been only one of many that've bothered him lately. "It's true I guess. We don't really exist without someone to remember us or our stories."

Malik is silent, he blinks slowly and doesn't say a single word. Desmond watches as his throat bobs as the man opens and then shuts his mouth.

"Are you real?" It's not the question Desmond was aiming for when bringing Clay's words up, but it's the one he wants to hear the answer to most right now. Clay hadn't known what Malik is, but had been convinced he isn't something from Desmond's mind.

"Are you?" Malik eventually counters. He turns to face him and the lake fades around them. The resolution dropping fast as the Animus gears up for another try at Connor's memories.

_95, 14, 11-_

"I hope so," Desmond tries for humor, but it falls a little flat. Clay and his AI construct, and how very close Desmond came to being punted into the recycling bin still too fresh in his mind. 

Was he even real? 

Were any of them real?

 _Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am._ Clay's own words hadn't been aimed at Desmond, but they were a good enough anchor anyway. He is real, he has to be, because he doesn't have the time to believe anything else.

"I hope so too," Malik says and he looks tired. Looks aged and far too close to the memories Desmond wishes he never had to see at the end of the man's life. "I really do, Desmond."

"Alright! I think we got it," Rebecca's voice filters in, loud and startling as Boston blinks into sudden existence. Not too far off from where he was last. Malik gone in a blink of an eye. "This should be it for the glitches. Try this block again."

"Sure," Desmond mutters as Connor's feet travel a route he's pretty much memorized with how many times he's been kicked out of this memory. The sound of the colony rises up around him, and Desmond wonders if he even knows what the definition of the word 'real' is anymore.

~

"She is real."

Shaun laughs and pokes fun at the images of Juno that creep up on them all without warning. A defense mechanism because the woman is creepy as fuck, and absolutely psychotic. Her words are filled with hate and loathing that don't really endear her to him at all. As if taking over his body wasn't enough.

"She is here, trapped."

The emails are even worse. Real time communication that Desmond finds hard to believe are prerecorded messages of any kind. Shaun's insistence that Juno is _reacting_ to him, to them all, sounds less and less paranoid the longer they stay in the Temple.

"I understand how she feels," Malik says as they both look on from up high. The small working station is exactly as it looks in the real world, but the Animus chair itself is missing. Desmond had thought it odd at first, but there's too much odd in his life to for any of it to even phase him anymore. "A little. That is a long time to be alone."

Malik isn't looking at anything or even Desmond. He's not even standing on ground that's there. The shadows of one flicker around his feet, but if Desmond were to step out to him he'd fall.

_26, 27, 27-_

"No one to see you or hear you, all alone," Malik sounds _pained_ and he turns slowly. Eyes nearly black with something Desmond doesn't understand but fears all the same. He looks like he did in the dungeon. The horror of his words and apologies ten times worse because of how much they obviously hurt coming out of him. "Your access to the world so limited. Only able to appear briefly. A mere second against an eternity of isolation."

_56, 57, 58-_

The cave flickers and dies in a scatter of code lines and they're in the loading screen again. Desmond crouched down and looking up at Malik who is worn and haggard in a way that Desmond has only seen once before, but there'd been far more blood then and _life_. There'd been life in the anger Malik had spit out as he accused Altair of killing Kadar. "I can't blame her for that anger. God help me, I can't."

_78, 80, 83-_

"Malik, she was crazy even before that," Desmond protests because that's very, very clear to just about any one of them, and the thought of Malik feeling _empathy_ for Juno --who thinks of humans a animals not even fit to be the mindless slaves her people once used them as-- is wrong on so many levels. "She was imprisoned with all that already!"

It's important, for some reason, that Malik understand that. Desmond doesn't know why, he just knows it in his gut. Malik isn't really listening to him though. 

He's just looking. Like he has been for the last several sessions. Eyes terrifyingly blank before something a little stunned looking warps his face. His hand comes up, and there's a fine tremor in it as he reaches out for Desmond.

And it's nothing that Desmond has ever seen before. Bits and pieces that he can recognize from the brief glimpses Altair got into his friend's life. Tired, worn, haggard, pained. It hits, like a punch to the gut when Desmond --finally, finally-- get it.

Malik is _broken_.

"Malik!" Desmond steps forward to reach back, and hits the rail of the Aquila instead. The ocean rendering itself in a shimmer too bright to be real, and Desmond can't breathe. Can't force the briny scent of the sea into his lungs to replace the musty smell of the cave and Malik for enough seconds that the Animus begins to send him warnings about losing synch.

Desmond breathes in sharply, and Connor spins away from the rail. Mind already forgetting why he'd spent so long staring out into the open ocean.

~

He doesn't see Malik again after that, and it feels a lot like something vital has been ripped away from him. The loading screen stays white, and nothing appears no matter how hard he tries to will it to. No cities spring up under his feet, no crowds to push him around, no Malik to reach out to. Proof, more proof, and damning proof.

He still doesn’t know what the fuck Malik is, or was, and he doesn't really have the time to try and figure it out. He spends too much of his nonexistent time on Malik anyway.

Desmond hadn't even realized how much he's really come to rely on those brief visits until now. How he's grown _dependent_ on those few minutes between memories. Not until the end of the world looms closer, and there's no one to talk about it with that won't take his head off for bitching. No one to play devil's advocate with him as the next memory loads and he tries not to think about what's going to happen when they find the key.

It's as stressful as the nearly constant dive he's in as he races to the end of Connor's memories. Something that weighs him down even as he shoulders the weight of Connor's life. The decisions others _force_ onto him, and the ones he forces onto himself. 

It dogs him back to his bedroll for the few hours he allows himself to sleep. Real sleep because the last time he came up he spoke Italian for a good five minutes before remembering himself. The strict divides of memories in his mind weakening under the force of yet another man's memories being shoved so quickly into his mind.

The Bleed Effect kicks in again. Another slow slide that seems so much quicker than before because now Desmond knows what it's like. Knows the signs to watch out for as Connor's memories break the partitions holding Altair, Ezio, and Clay away from Desmond.

The pounding of hooves chases Desmond around the world because there's no one else as good as him, and it's not just memories they need to save the world now. The Temple needs power, and there just aren't enough Assassins left to get them all. Not with the Templars hunting the batteries too. Desmond fights Templar agents in body armor and red coats. Still in control enough to know that these Templars don't need to stop to reload. For now. It will get worse if he doesn't finish quickly enough and attains another Nexus Synch to fix it.

He won't, he doesn't have the time to wander through Connor's entire life. He has to pick and choose the memories. Aiming for the ones bound to give him the information he needs. It won't matter if his mind breaks again anyway. 

He isn't going to live long enough to have to worry about his sanity this time.

Desmond figures that out as he learns a little more with each battery he slots back into place. With each hateful monologue by the ghost of a woman that Desmond's increasingly sure isn't actually dead. Her eyes burning a little brighter each time, as they begin to fix on him with a brightness that he's only seen in sadists.

He dives through a dead man's memories, fixes the power grid for the Temple, and wishes like hell that he could see Malik again. Even if it's just for these last few hours of his life. The minutes spent alone in the loading screen as Connor attains everything he wanted, and loses everything else.

There's graveyard dirt under Desmond's fingernails as he holds the key, and they're down to minutes now. Death and destruction approach the world and all Desmond can think about is how he wants to see Malik again. Just one last time.

~

Desmond dies, and Juno is a lying bitch because it fucking _hurts_. Lightning and fire coursing through his veins and eating up every last little thing he has until there's nothing left of him at all. Just a small spark that gets sucked up by a wave of gold and endless darkness.

~

Waking up is a surprise, a painful one. 

Desmond sucks in a harsh breath that tastes sweet to him, but only fuels the fire he can still feel in his hand. There's a fine lattice of scar tissue spreading over his right hand when he can unclench his fist enough to look at it. Jagged and uneven like lightning bolts. They're smooth and cool to the touch, but his hand burns with one last renewed bolt of pain before it fades into a dull ache.

He's in his bedroll, as far from the Animus as he could get it without actually leaving the Temple. Looking around is eerie. Everything is exactly as it should be, exactly as he remembers it. Except for the Animus chair. 

It's not there.

Desmond frowns and reaches for the Animus menu automatically. There's nothing there though. No ghostlike sensation of an interface to guide him. He's not in the Animus. He's dead.

Desmond wonders if there really is an afterlife of some kind after all. 

A hot wind swirls past him. Faint and barely felt, but enough to get him moving to the exit. Slowly walking as thoughts of afterlifes fade with the steady increase of the temperature that really doesn't go with the colder nights they'd been dealing with. There's no forest or clearing when he comes out of the cave. What greets him instead is something far more familiar.

Jerusalem spreads out below him and the cave he leaves blends seamlessly into the road he's traveled a hundred times in someone else's body. His own feet remember it well enough that Desmond doesn't have to think before he's approaching the gates. Wide open and inviting. Disturbing because there are no guards, no people, no scholars, nothing.

The city is quiet and deserted. Suffocating in its stillness and silence. It's no better when he climbs up onto the roofs where he'd expect fewer people, because the always present sound of voices rising from the streets is gone. There's only the sound of his own breathing and the faint rush of wind as he runs and jumps. His body taking moving with little thought to the one building he needs to see right now.

The grate to the Bureau is open and Desmond doesn't pause to look before jumping down into the courtyard. Silent and still, but not empty.

Malik sits against the wall furthest from the fountain. Propped up by more cushions than Desmond ever remembers there being. He's every bit as -- _broken_ \-- tired and haggard looking as Desmond remembers from the last time he saw him. There's barely anything in his face as he watches Desmond walk towards him. Not pleasure, not surprise, not even anger. 

Desmond is dead. Malik is dead. Desmond doesn't know what is going on, but Malik's been telling him about this --whatever it is-- from the beginning. Desmond has just been too stupid to really listen before.

"How long have you been here? Like this?" Desmond asks. He moves when Malik doesn't answer and crouches right in front of him. Reaching out --and why did he never notice it was always Malik reaching out before?-- and barely skimming the man's face with his fingers before Malik jerks back. His eyes going a touch wider. "Malik, answer me."

Slowly, the man reaches up to touch Desmond's hand, his eyes turning to it like it's the most fascinating thing in the world. His smile is strangely detached as he lightly curls his fingers around Desmond's wrist. The grip growing tighter as _life_ seems to flare back into his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is low and Desmond strains to hear it even in the utter silence of this world.

"I thought I was finally going mad. To imagine not being alone any longer," the smile turns sharp and bitter and this is the most of Malik Desmond has seen in a while. His withdrawal from Desmond something that has been happening slowly since Desmond saw his death. "I _welcomed_ it, Desmond. Even knowing it was my own mind failing me I welcomed the respite. I relished the company, even if it was so utterly foreign. Anything was preferable to being so _alone_."

Desmond's wrist hurts from the grip, and it's an immediate pain that he's never experienced in the Animus. That sensation dulled to almost nothingness to aid in synchronization. This isn't the Animus though, and there's something terribly funny in the thought of them both seeing the other as their own personal avatar of madness. He'll laugh over it later, as soon as he's over the horror of what he's starting to realize has happened.

Malik's legs give way as Desmond kneels between them, reaching out with both hands to grip his head and keep him facing forward. Fingers lacing through black strands of hair free of the gray and age he'd last seen in Altair's memories --the blood and torture and _death_ as he'd held the severed head in his arms-- seemingly so long ago. "Malik, _how_?"

"I don't know. It was, it was that _damned_ Apple," Malik's face contorts in rage and disgust, but he doesn't let go of Desmond, just transfers his hand to Desmond's neck. Holding tight and pulling him close. Closer than ever before and Desmond can feel the shudders wracking the man as he buries his face against Desmond.

"Abbas couldn't use it," Desmond protests the words, not the actions because Malik had barely had the chance to understand his freedom before his death. Had barely had the chance at all to enjoy the lack of chains and the fresh air before a traitorous bastard took it from him. "It was too much for him."

"Swami!" Malik hisses out and it's a laugh. Wild and angry and bitter and _delighted_. "The whore son kissed the shit Abbas walked on, he'd do anything for his master's approval! Though I know not what he did, or why I ended up like this."

There's a jerk and Desmond feels the end of Malik's amputated arm hit him in the chest. Disabled but still younger than the frail man Altair had pulled from the dungeons. Denials falling weakly from his lips as he tried to feverishly assure him Sef's death was not on his hands.

Swami had never touched the Apple though. It had glowed and pulsed in Altair's hand as rage had taken him, and Swami's whimpers had only fueled it. His blinding rage making him reach out and _into_ Swami. Not content with a simple death from the man, he had wanted Swami to _suffer_ for a long time, and the Apple had gladly responded. Desmond doesn't know what would have happened if Maria hadn't interfered. If her death hadn't shocked Altair back to his senses enough to reign the power of the artifact back. 

Too late to not cause even more harm. Harm that Desmond doubts Altair even knew he caused.

"No one else?" Desmond manages to croak out as the enormity of this final insult, this final undeserved punishment dawns on him. He wants to laugh at it, because Altair somehow managed to end his friendship with Malik the same way he began it.

"I used to be able to reach out," Malik says slowly, his body is losing some of the tension that has kept him stiff and is melting slowly against Desmond. "To those I knew, to those who thought my name. In dreams or thought, I could touch them. For only a fraction of a second."

It's terrifying, how easily Desmond can track that thought down to its logical conclusion. Malik could reach out to the world of the living as long as there was someone to remember him. 

His friends, his family holding him dear in their thoughts until they died one by one. And then no one was left to think of Malik Al-Sayf. No one to touch or interact with for hundreds of years. Not until Desmond came along and got himself kidnapped by Abstergo. 

Malik isn't broken. He broke a long time ago, and he's slowly pulling himself back together. Piece by piece as Desmond holds him. The shards of himself found sometime when he was playing along with Desmond. Both of them taking comfort in their own hallucinations.

"I am not mad," Malik says, still slow but with sure conviction that Desmond doesn't think he'd ever be able to manage if the situation were reversed. 

"No," Desmond confirms and doesn't let go even as the man moves to shift back. "Just dead."

The barked laugh is dark as night but it's steady at least. Malik pulls back harder, taking Desmond down with him in a pile of limbs and cushions that he knows Malik would have never allowed in life. But an eternity of loneliness will change a person, and Desmond doesn't really know this man who stares at him with barely concealed desperation. Five fingers digging bruises into the base of his skull. " _Tell_ me."

Desmond doesn't know what Malik is asking for, so he opens his mouth and tells him everything.

~

Desmond is used to being alone. He's been alone for most of his life from the minute he decided his parents were crazy. He'd pulled back then, at fifteen, and had never quite allowed himself to grow close to anyone after that. A mixture of the paranoia of enemies he didn't really believe in mixed up with the fear that he was still being tracked had kept him distant from most people as he wandered the States. 

Becoming a bartender hadn't just been a money thing for him. It'd been a way for him to fit into a world that he didn't want to let too close. Bartenders were everyone's friend after all, but no one was really friends with a bartender. Desmond knew everyone, but not a single person he knew could pick his face out of a line up if their lives depended on it. 

Even his coworkers hadn't gotten close. They worked together, maybe shot back a few beers, and then went their separate ways as the sun rose in the morning. Turnover at bars are always high, and Desmond had used that to his advantage when people had started getting too nosey. Started asking too many questions.

Lucy had been the first person to really get close to Desmond in a long while, and that is what had made the end --her end-- so very much worse. Rebecca and Shaun came a close second, but even they knew more about him from his files than from his own mouth. 

He's used to being alone and lonely, and that is what had made diving into the memories of his ancestors so hard and painful. 

Altair had been alone and that had been easy, but the man hadn't stayed that way for very long. Ezio couldn't exist without others, and his gregarious nature had been a rasp against the ache started by Altair. Connor had actively _looked_ for- Well, not quite a family, but those he brought to the homestead were definitely something more than mere friends.

It'd all made Desmond so very aware of how alone he was, comparing his life to that of any of his ancestors. He cannot imagine what it must have been like to Malik who had always seemed to have the entire Brotherhood at his back when Desmond followed Altair's footsteps. An unwavering support that bent itself to his whim so easily that Altair had felt no doubts leaving the Order in his hand.

Malik sleeps uneasily. Hand nearly buried in the cloth of Desmond's unzipped hoodie, and head pillowed at an uncomfortable angle on his leg. He'd listened to every word Desmond had to say and the long silence that followed had gone unbroken by either of them until Malik slipped into sleep.

Tiredness tugs at Desmond too, but he stays awake and aware. Malik had helped Desmond through the worst of the Bleed Effect, and Desmond is determined to pay some of that back. He stays up because he knows what it's like to be alone and how very much it hurts. It's a small drop in the ocean of time Malik's spent alone, but Desmond stays up so that Malik won't be alone anymore.

It hurts, but Desmond is used to this pain now. This ache as he feels himself falling even more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now this fic is laughing at me, and telling me I'm not quite done yet here either.


	2. Chapter 2

_Malik can't move by the time they're done with him. His entire body aches with the beating he could not fight off and the rough stone of the cell he's thrown in makes the pain flare to a blinding level. He can't speak from the wounds left on him, but he is Malik Al-Sayf and he has born greater pain than this before. He manages to roll over enough to spit defiantly at Abbas. A dark red glob of spit that's more blood than anything else._

_Abbas shakes his head as his loyal men file out behind him. His smile is cruel and every shadow and rumor that he's been fighting these past few years given flesh. "Be thankful, you still are of use to me yet, Brother."_

_The heavy door closes behind him and Malik's left in the dark with his wounds, the drying blood of a young he raised like his own mixing with his, and the scurrying of rats. Anger fills him but it's not enough to overcome the pain that grabs him by the throat and pulls him into unconsciousness._

~

Malik wakes in darkness. The rough scratch of the dungeon floor beneath him is familiar after all this time, as is the scent of the cell around him. Stale air, rotting food, and urine. It hurts to wake here again, beyond what he thought possible.

He'd dreamt of it again. Rescue. Such a sweet dream with the most vivid details. He swore he had felt Maria's capable hands against his face, the sweet taste of untainted water, and Altair's face had been lined with the years he knows has past. The bed he'd rested in had felt so real, and their talk of taking back what Abbas has destroyed even better.

He must be coming down with fever again to have dreamt it so vividly. Malik smiles into the dark and wonders if this will be the time the sickness manages to kill him despite Abbas' best efforts to keep him weak enough not to fight, but strong enough to live for whatever reason he has for keeping Malik imprisoned.

Not for the first time he contemplates his own death, and the benefits of hastening it to deny Abbas what it is he seeks. There's an appeal in it, in spiting the traitor, but the thought clashes with the tiny scrap of pride that stubbornly clings to him still. Bright and fierce even after all this time. Years, Malik thinks, though there is no way to tell for sure.

He's lost count of days, of guard shifts, and the irregular schedule of food and care that keeps him clinging to life. He only has guesses and the few scraps of rumors the increasingly lax guards --they are not Assassins, no one with so little discipline could be part of the Order-- to go by.

Seasons have passed. Three years, maybe four going from the crude conversations he has heard. Perhaps that is why he had such a bittersweet dream. Three years is time enough for a return trip from so far out in the East. News of the warlord's death had traveled far faster than a small family could after all.

Malik is only human, and the bit of hope from that thought --from that dream-- is enough to keep him sustained for a good while longer.

~

_Maria's eyes shine with tears and fury but her fingers are cold as she wipes what feels like an entire lifetime's worth of grime from his face. Altair's voice is rough and his hand warm as he clasps Malik's weakening grip, "It was not your fault, Brother."_

_"It would not have happened to you," Malik insists because it is true. Altair would never have spent so much time playing games that the shadows would have ambushed him. He would have gone straight for them the moment he knew they were about. Torn them out of the Order and cleansed it before the infection could spread as far as Malik had allowed it._

_"Are we not one, Malik?" Grief is a foreign emotion on Altair's face to Malik, for all that they have shared it has always been an emotion the man kept to himself before. "We have shared in the glory of our victories, so too must we share the pain of our defeat. It is how we grow closer, grow stronger. A wise man once told me this, Brother, and his words still hold true even now."_

_Malik sighs as his words, so old now, are parroted back nearly perfectly to him. He would laugh but there is a heaviness in his chest that would turn it only into pain. "Thank you, Brother."_

_Altair's lips twitch and Maria smiles down at him before gently pushing the other man away and climbing to her feet. "Rest, Malik. We must prepare, and you must regain your strength."_

~

Thirst grows slowly in him, and Malik lets it. Waiting for it to reach an unbearable level before even thinking about turning to the bucket of tainted water that occasionally gets filled. It's not just water in there, but it's better for him to not think on it too closely. Better for him to be nearly dehydrated before taking from it. It is only when he can't stand the thirst anymore that Malik moves to roll over and begin his slow crawl to the corner the bucket is in.

Shock drives the thirst out of his mind almost immediately when his tired body moves easily and without a hint of pain or protest.

Pain has been his constant companion since Abbas and his loyal traitors had ripped him from Sef's lifeless side. The beating he'd received while still too shocked to fight --against those he had called Brother!-- severe enough to keep him from protesting the accusations hurled his way. The lies he was forced to take as his own with not one single person standing up for him. It had kept him delirious for weeks, and formed a pit of helplessness he could not escape alone though he had tired. Oh, how he had _tried_.

That pain is gone now. Not one hint of it left in him, not from the kicks he had received just days ago or the broken bones that were never allowed to be set before healing wrongly.

Malik pushes, cautiously, and easily lifts himself up to his knees. From there he makes his feet. There's no pain, no discomfort at all aside from his thirst. Malik stumbles forward, and his steps are only uneven from the stones and utter darkness. It takes him a mere moment to reach the corner with the water bucket. A journey that usually takes him much longer to crawl.

He falls to his knees and catches himself against the wall with his right arm. It doesn't shake or give under his weight. The shoulder doesn't scream from its numerous dislocations, and his fingers dig into the gritty stone without a hint of pain from how often they have been broken.

Breathing is suddenly hard, and Malik makes a sound. A sharp sound that's equal parts mirth and a sob, because when he can get a breath in it's the foul odor of the tainted water he breathes in. Malik's gripping the splintered wood of the bucket to drink before a thought stops him.

He gets back up and feels along the wall. Fingers sliding over stones and filth as he makes his way around the room. Three strides before the first corner, and one more before the stone turns to wood under his hand. The cell door is shut.

Malik stops breathing as he reaches for the iron latch that locks from the outside and twists. The door opens under the slightest push.

~

_There's a sigh, a breath of living air that Malik dreads even before his eyes snap open. In the still air of the cell moving air only came from the opening of the door, and the door only opened to allow his captors in. The softness of the bed beneath him does little to detract from the fact that he is still captured for all that Altair and Maria have planned._

_Malik does not have the strength to sit up. Cannot flee, cannot shout, cannot even raise his one arm to block the blade glittering in Swami's hand. Abbas' most faithful dog sneering down at him as he stalks the only prey he will ever be able to capture. A defenseless cripple already on the brink of death._

_He has not the strength for any of it, but he does have the strength to laugh in his face. The strength to watch his arm falter and eyes go wide in shocked fear at the reaction. Malik laughs at the whore's son standing above him, he laughs at the traitor Abbas, and every man who has let themselves fall far enough to follow him._

_Altair has returned, and this mockery of an Order's days are numbered._

~

Malik has spent more than his fair share of time in the company of scholars. Before and after the loss of his arm. The knowledge they have and shared freely with him had been fascinating. Were it not for his temper, Malik might have forgone the path of an Assassin and gone straight for the rank of Rafiq instead.

His skill with a sword, and the thrill of a mission had been too great for him to willingly give up though.

Religion had been one of the things that fascinated Malik. All religion, because there were almost as many different ones as there were people in the world. Malik had drunk it all in as a young boy. Finding many interesting things in the texts and scrolls he'd been allowed to see.

There were many things he agreed with, and many things he did not agree with. Many of the religions intersected, and many more couldn't be any further apart in their beliefs. Comparing and contrasting two or three had been an exercise some of the Dai had run him through as he got older.

Almost all of the religions he'd studied had agreed there was some kind of place after death. Some reward or punishment or wayside that the dead would go to after they left their bodies.

Malik doesn't know which one of those places he is in now.

The citadel is empty and exactly as he remembers it last. The study is clearly his own, with reports he remembers reading shortly before Sef's murder. Masyaf is the same. The market is filled with stalls, baskets laid out for perusal, and not a single person in sight. The homes are empty. No sign of any owner or habitation.

The water from the fountain is sweet, and the bread he picks up is fresh. Better food and drink than he has had in far too long.

Malik sits on a stone bench and looks down into the calmer parts of the fountain. His own face stares back up at him, but it's a much younger face that greets him. His face hasn't been so unlined in years, and his hair is a solid black once again. Free from the gray that had stolen almost all of his color.

He laughs and strikes out at the water. Dashing the image of himself away with his single arm. He is younger but still not whole. He is free from the dungeon but alone. He is healed and healthy but he is _dead_.

Malik is dead.

~

_Death does not hurt. Malik feels nothing of his death despite the fury that set Swami's inexpert swings even wider than they normally were. The blade of his sword too dull to cut cleanly in one slice from lack of care._

_Malik falls back onto an old trick that has kept him sane through his tortures. He steps back from his frail body and watches, detached and amused, as Swami stabs and slices until sweat beads up on his forehead. That wild look of confused fear not leaving his eyes even when he stops, and nothing is left of Malik's body but blood and flesh._

_Swami breathes hard, his middle is growing thick from excess, and this small bit of exercise has him winded. Malik would laugh if he could, but his body seems done for. So he only grins as the traitor quickly wraps Malik's head in a sack. Leaving with one last wary glance at the bed, and Malik --weightless and finally free-- follows to see his end._

~

The land stretches out and no matter how far Malik goes he finds no sign of life. Not human or animal. He finds food easily enough. Freshly cooked, and perfect. Even the meat is still warm when he wants it to be.

The library offers him few clues as to where he is. The Christian Limbo is the closest he can manage. He is in no paradise and he is in no hell. He simply _is_. He is still alone though and that makes it less likely perhaps. Malik eventually leaves the religious and philosophical books behind because none of them offer any insight into where he is now.

Malik grows hungry, thirsty, and tired. The limits of his body are the same here as they were in life before his betrayal. Wounds heal the same and his body still performs the functions he expects of it. Weapons feel strange in his hand for only a moment before his muscles remember the weight and motion of them. The sun sets and rises at predicable times, the stars and moon the same. Food does not rot no matter how long he leaves it out.

Things appear when he wants them enough. Passing thoughts do not produce the same response though. Malik spends a week thinking of different things, and finds the limit of it appears to be his own mind's ability to believe such a thing possible before losing interest in it.

The stables still have the smell of horses in them, and beds that of their owners. Malik leaves Masyaf and travels by foot through roads he has not traveled in too long. Every city he sees is the same. Acre still has signs and flags of the Crusader's occupation, Templar symbols discretely littered through the city that has been free of both for years now. Books and letters in the sharp lines of the Crusaders' own language fascinate Malik for a day before he moves on.

Jerusalem is exactly as he remembers it. From before he had given up his position as Bureau leader and returned to Masyaf. The building still holds all of his possessions. Mirror images, in some cases, of the things he had found in his rooms in Masyaf. There's no sign of the man who replaced him, nothing of the changes Malik knows he made. The change Malik himself had seen on a few occasions.

Malik turns away from the room he used to be so familiar with and wanders out into the courtyard to sleep.

~

_The Apple is terrifying in all its power, and Malik wants to scream at Altair as he holds it out to Swami's greedy hands. Wants to cry out and berate because this is what Abbas has sought. This is what he has wanted this whole time, and Altair is foolishly giving in to it._

_Malik can't though. His voice is gone and his time over. He can only watch for a brief second before Swami gets too close and the Apple flares blindingly with a golden light. Malik flinches back and nearly closes his eyes as a roar fills his ears._

_There's a feeling. A tug deep in his chest and Malik can hear Swami's voice over the roar. Reverent but unintelligible as anger slams into him from all sides. Like the fingers of a giant hand closing tight around him, and Malik is powerless to resist as he's swept closer to the blinding glow where Swami stands._

~

Malik stays in Jerusalem. Masyaf pains him too much now that he no longer has the strangeness of his situation distracting him as much. The sight of it unchanged is too much to bear so soon. The home Sef shared with his wife and just born child a silent condemnation. The room near his own that Tazim claimed still holding his son's gray robes, and not one single clue as to his fate after Malik was thrown into the dungeons.

He knows where he is now, or he suspects he knows.

The Apple had shone so brightly and viciously that Malik had not even noticed what was left of him --soul? spirit? did it even matter?-- had been pulled in by whatever fevered words Swami had said.

Another prison. He wonders if the traitor had even realized what he was doing, of if he had simply been flailing about with the artifact with the same skill he gave his blades. Clumsily and inexpertly. Not even knowing what it is he was doing.

It's unsurprisingly easy to believe.

~

Malik dreams of Masyaf, and he climbs a tower that had been gone even before Kadar had joined the ranks as a Novice. He is unsurprised to find Altair waiting for him at the top. Small and scrawny in entirely gray robes, face free of the scar Malik knows will come to him in a few years.

There's grief in his eyes as he looks up at Malik, unchanged from how he is by this dream. "Forgive me, Malik."

"Again?" Malik walks over to one of the wooden boards left jutting out for a Leap of Faith. There is no hay below, there is nothing. Just an endless darkness that swirls with fog. "I am a patient man, Altair, but even I cannot stand having to repeat myself so many times. There is _nothing_ to forgive."

"I could not save you," Altair is older when Malik turns back. Scar in place and the full robes and gear of a Master Assassin on him. He still looks grieved. "I failed-"

" _We_ failed," Malik walks back to Altair and they're not standing on the tower anymore, but are on a hill below the citadel. He reaches out and clasps his friend's shoulder, marveling that it should feel so solid in this dream. "A wise man once told me the words of an even wiser man. We fail and succeed together, and fault does not come into the matter at all."

Altair is aged and cups the Apple in one hand. Malik's touch is not solid anymore and passes through him as the man steps forward. Eyes no longer seeing Malik and grief still radiating off of him. "Those were not my words, but you never failed to improve on your teachings my friend."

Malik's voice is gone when he opens his mouth. No words spill out and he feels insubstantial in the dark room Altair is in. The glow from the Apple dies as he places it in a pouch at his belt. There's a tug deep in Malik's chest and he's gone a mere second after realizing he is not dreaming.

~

It happens again, infrequently, and it takes far too long for Malik to figure out what is happening.

He floats in dreams. Free to talk, to move, to interact. He watches in life. Unable to talk, limited in his movement, and incapable of any interaction at all.

The summons come randomly, and from more than just Altair. Tazim is who he sees most often in dreams. His son younger than he remembers him last and smiling at him with lips that remind Malik painfully of Kadar. His dreams are chaotic, and Malik wanders them freely. Trying to ease what he finds in the short time his summons last. All too brief moments where he holds a boy so happy to see him, so unwilling to remember he is a man that all of Malik's words fall on deaf ears. His explanations forgotten until all Malik can do is hold him and whisper, "I love you."

Altair is less frequent and mostly Malik finds himself wandering after the man for the moments when the Apple is powering down. His use of it is concerning, as much as the fact that in all the times Malik finds his friend like that he fails to find Maria there to stop his hand from going back to it.

Darim dreams once or twice, and they are the same as Tazim's dreams. The boy Malik remembers watching a time or two following him across a shifting landscape that Malik has never seen before. His eyes wide and warm, but no real indication that he ever understands the significance of Malik's presence.

No indication that any of them will wake and realize it is not a dream.

Nothing Malik does allows him out of his prison. He is brought out by others. Their thoughts, he thinks, the key to summoning him. Neither Altair nor Tazim are surprised to see him when he appears in their dreams, and when he finds himself in the living world it is only to find Altair holding the Apple. Eyes far away and a little wistful in a way that is easy to interpret.

Malik begins to feel it when he's being summoned. There's no warning or tug that brings him out, just a slight pressure that doesn't always result in him being summoned. He can, if he presses hard, force it to be enough. Force himself into a dream or the living world, but the intention must be there first. Someone else must think of him to allow it.

~

Abbas still lives.

That becomes apparent when Malik finds himself back in the cell with the man staring at him from the door. A curious look of contempt on his face. "Do you haunt this place then?"

Malik says nothing as he walks up to the man, watches the contempt fade into apathy. Watches it slide into nothingness as his punch rips the dream apart and sends Malik straight back to the Apple. It's abrupt and uncomfortable, but Malik will be damned if he spends any time in the traitor's presence without attacking him.

He hopes the man felt some of the pain in the living world.

~

Malik goes back to Acre and searches the city. He finds out more than he ever wanted to know about farming in the North, and tracks down the identities of a few Templar spies they had always suspected but never confirmed. It takes him a long time to turn the city over completely, and in that space of time he stops counting.

Stops counting the rise and fall of the sun, of the days that pass. He has found he can manipulate that as well after all, and that makes time meaningless. Counting it is a swift road to madness.

He wanders afterwards. Further from the cities and roads he knows so well. Out into the areas he only knows off of a map. Cities appear here too. Filled with things he does not expect, and perhaps a bit more true to the current time for it.

There is no life still, and Malik's efforts to will something into being are fruitless. The Apple can provide everything else except this one thing it seems.

~

"This is to be my new prison then," Malik states grimly, and Altair's eyes flicker around the courtyard of the Bureau. Different from the one he now lives in, but identical to how it was when Altair was first seeking redemption.

"Death should be the ultimate freedom," Altair replies as he lounges on a few cushions. His face unlined, and far from the old man that Malik had followed through the streets of a changed Masyaf not too long ago. Following his slow footsteps as he walked until the Apple pulled him back again.

"Not for me," Malik still presses though Altair is as ignorant of what these dreams mean as anyone else. "The Apple has me, Altair. This is as much a prison as the cells under Masyaf."

Altair either does not hear him or dismisses his words entirely. He watches Malik shift and says nothing. A look of peace settling over his face before this dream goes the way of them all. Malik hates the solid tug in his chest that brings him back to his prison.

~

He does not see Altair again, and Malik does not realize it until Tazim begins to age in his dreams. Only then does he realize he has not seen any dreams or followed the other man in life for a good amount of time.

It was inevitable, Altair's steps had been slow and labored while the world had continued on every bit as fast and brutal as ever. His death has always been an assured event.

Malik grieves still. For the loss of a good man, and the loss of his friend whom he knows he will not see again.

~

The silence that surrounds him is horrible. Malik takes to making noise to try and fill it, but the efforts are pathetic and only serve to emphasize what is not there. He is only one man, and one man cannot fill the silence of an entire world. No matter how hard he tries.

It echoes in his ears. Ringing in it's terrible endlessness until Malik shouts. A harsh cry that rips it apart for a bare moment that is _not enough_! Never enough!

~

After Altair's death there is only Tazim, and Malik knows --though he doesn't acknowledge it-- that is limited as well.

Tazim is old. His hair more white than black and face lined with fine lines. The skin when Malik reaches out to touch his son is thin and fragile. He smiles at the touch and the lines in his face turn into deep crags, "I have missed you father."

"I've always been right here," Malik protests, but this is only a dream for his son and Malik has stopped hoping for understanding. There's a tiredness surrounding Tazim, a sense of finality that makes words twist and stick in his throat. "Do not go."

Tazim smiles and his eyes slide shut. Malik feels the fragile skin under his fingers slide away and the Apple tug him from the darkness rushing into the dream.

~

Malik starts counting time again.

He doesn't influence the days, and counts them. Marks them down as they pass on a scroll. One black mark for each day. Mark after mark after mark until the scroll is more ink than blank paper. Until it's filled completely.

He's not summoned again.

~

Malik destroys the Bureau, shatters pots and cracks the spines of books as he turns his fury outward. All the anger and rage that's been building for so long. Years and years, but he doesn't really know how much time has passed. Not anymore. Shards grind to dust under his boots and there's nothing left to destroy. Nothing left at all that isn't broken, and it's not enough.

Malik burns the building and walks away from Jerusalem.

It's still not enough.

He doesn't plan where to go, he simply walks and doesn't care. Doesn't try to track his route. Cities appear and the land changes around him. He doesn't push for anything to appear, but the Apple still provides for him. Grief and anger blind him to it, and Malik ignores it all as he puts distance between himself and all that he knows. Pushes himself to the limits that he had only toyed with before. Losing himself in an empty world.

~

He's lost.

Malik climbs and his hands leave behind bloody prints that blend in with the red dirt and stone.

Malik screams at a broken down cart, laughs at the shards of a silvered mirror, talks to nothing in a room too dark to see anything.

Malik looses count of days and one step is the same as the first and the last and it doesn't matter to remember them all. Does not matter enough to remember anything, and so he doesn't.

Malik lays down under a table and foreign scents assault his nose.

Malik rips every page out of a book and does not know what is written on the pages as they burn to ash.

Malik looks at food he's never seen before and his stomach turns.

Malik looks around him and is lost. So completely lost.

~

Awareness seeps back into him slowly, as does a cold rationality that stings as it cuts him to the core. Malik wakes up in Jerusalem's Bureau. He does not know if he came back under his own power or under something else. He does not know how far he traveled, or for how long. He feels as a man waking up from a long fever should. Distant and confused at what has happened.

He feels remarkably rested and in good shape as he sits up to lean against the wall of the courtyard. Still a little tired and confused by a nightmarish jumble of memories that fly away from his grasping fingers. His eyes take in the undamaged building he finds himself back in. The books he burned whole, the pots he broke undamaged.

Malik's body is a whole as it ever gets as well. The hunger and thirst that had gnawed at him is gone, the ache in his limbs from pushing himself as hard as he could no more than a memory, the scrapes and bruises he had inevitably gathered gone. His last clear memory is of fields of some crop he doesn't think he ever got close enough to identify.

It's not enough, but Malik knows now that he never will get what he had unconsciously been seeking with his fleeing and his pride refuses to allow him to try a more direct path to the true death he now knows is denied him.

He continues to keep track of time as he recovers himself, though his accuracy is suspect. He marks days, weeks, months, years. Decades pass and Malik is still alone. There are no summons and his anger is spent, burnt down and leaving nothing but bitter ashes behind.

When he feels well enough, Malik leaves the land he knows so well, and the Apple shows him what has changed in the world. It doesn't change the fact that he's alone, that it looks like he might always be that way, but it fills his time. Keeps him busy and distracted. 

~

Centuries.

Malik feels shaken as he takes in how very far the world seems to have progressed in his fit of madness. He has no other word to call the black morass of disjointed memories he tries to ignore. The shards bright and wickedly sharp.

He hates himself for having allowed it to happen. Years of betrayal and time spent in the slim mercies of Abbas had not done what his time in this prison did by leaving him alone. Malik had broken, completely and utterly. It shames him to think of it, and the fact that there is no one to have seen his failure is a bitter salve on his pride.

Malik throws himself into his travels, and picks up the trail of the world as he works to catch up to it. He finds the Templars trail all too easily, and it dismays him to find their enemy not as beaten as he and Altair had thought. Through them he finds the changed trails of the Brotherhood, and Malik begins to study. Looking at names and dates and wars and battles. Religions, cities, and kingdoms rise and topple almost too quickly for him to catch their significance before going to the next era.

His travels are slow and take him from country to country. The entire world open for him until it no longer is. Malik learns of another land --and he remembers now the maps that Altair had made, the impossible lines Malik had once scoffed at-- but their secrets are denied to him by the vast ocean. His own two feet all he has to transport himself, and Malik knows enough to not even dare to think he could take the ocean on his own.

There is enough still to learn to keep Malik busy though, and he thinks nothing of the lands he cannot see.

There is coal and steam and gas. There are machines and industrialization. There is _electricity_. It jumps forward at a rate of speed he can barely keep up with. Inventions and articles explaining the mechanics of it all abound. There are philosphies and rulers. Templar plots and Assassin expansions.

It is almost enough.

~

The first human voice he hears stuns Malik enough to nearly bring him to his knees. The recording skips from his sudden jerk back and he almost strains himself steadying the table to bring the voice back. It's a woman's voice, singing words he would not understand even if he were able to concentrate on anything but another person's voice.

It's been too long since Malik heard any voice but his own, and even that has been silent too long. Malik laughs and pulls up a low stool to the machine he's spent days studying and learning to operate. He rests his head on the table and closes his eyes as the woman sings. He starts the recording over again when it ends. Again and again as he remembers what people sound like.

Malik knows a dozen languages, and three times as many dialects. He can read it, he can write it, but speech is a new avenue that he slowly learns. Books are unhelpful, even the ones that try to explain pronunciation are of little help. The recordings are better. More so as they become more widely used around the world. The machines to operate them change, and Malik makes a point to keep up with it. To always have one near and playing, to fill up the silence.

The recordings are mostly music still, with singers becoming more popular, but he finds ones that are nothing but spoken words. Poets and philosophers that he slowly translates. That he plays over and over again to absorb the words, absorb the voices, and learn the languages he already knows.

It distracts him far more than anything else has in far too long, and Malik hears the rust fall from his own voice as he speaks to himself. Foreign words falling into the void he does not acknowledge.

~

As ever, humanity takes these new inventions and runs with them. Malik drifts along and watches as machines become steadily more complex and involved. Until the rate of his reading is outstripped by them, and he has to pick and choose which ones to keep up with.

Radios do not work here, so he follows the records across lands. Finding himself in a cold, hard land for a good long time. Listening and watching the landscape change under a revolution he barely knows about. He can only see the effects it leaves behind.

Movies throw him again when he leaves that land and finds out how rapidly other countries have leapt forward. History is as violent as ever, and Malik notes the large wars that have happened --seeing the Brotherhood and the Order woven in between the lines-- as he studies one of the most involved machines he's seen yet.

The buildings to house them are already set up for their use, but threading a reel of the near transparent film through the machine with one hand is not an easy task. Managing the controls are easier but no less complicated.

It's worth it to see the image of people flicker across a bare wall. Their mouths moving out of synch with the sound, telling him he has done something wrong, but Malik lets it play on. Uncaring of anything except for how these images move and seem so very real. More and more so as the years go by and humanity improves.

~

He keeps close track of the Templars and the Assassins. Keeps up with the plots and the war. He watches as both sides change. A little for the better and a little for the worse. Panic is starting to edge into both though, and Malik is aware enough of the date to know why.

Altair had ever been insistent on that part when he left the Apple. Pale and so very shaken from what he had seen but would not fully share with anyone.

The Animus project is something that Malik can barely comprehend when he first finds allusions to it. The plans are not laid out anywhere Malik can access and, while his skills with computers are reasonable, without the proper intelligence from the living world he is essentially stumbling around blindly.

What he _can_ find on the project is disturbing. Mining the past by use of this new machine doesn't seem like it should work to him, or if it does, it seems like it should come with horrific consequences.

He is right, in that last regard. Time passes and Malik finds reports detailing the effects of the machine on people. The degeneration that is quick and deadly when not managed, but slow and painful when managed. He reads files and notes filled with details of people who are almost never named.

Their too long existence a study of pain and madness the likes of which he can barely imagine. Some are Assassins, either through birth or choice. Some are innocents caught in the Templar's monstrous sights. A few are even Templars themselves with the bad luck to have the right lineage. Side does not seem to matter to them.

Nor, does it seem to matter to the Assassins. Malik sees the same reports in their hands, and sees their own notes. Their own investigations and wonderings on how this Animus can be used to their benefit. He watches through his removed station as they arrange things. Playing the same game as the Templars. Arranging marriages and placing their own people in positions he would not have thought of even in the most desperate of times.

They play the same game as the Templars, until Malik has a hard time distinguishing one side from another.

~

Malik has forgotten what it was like to be summoned, and the feeling of it leaves him stunned for a moment until he realizes where he is. Until he _recognizes_ the room.

The Templar's prison for those they experiment on with their newest machine. Malik hasn't been here in a while. The things happening to people he will never really know except as a number, and occasionally as a name, far too much for him to handle following for very long. Not when there is nothing he can do to stop it.

There's a man on the decadently large bed of the room and Malik realizes that it's happening again. He's gone utterly mad once more. The man looks like no one that Malik has ever seen before, but every part of him is made up of pieces from those he has known. He has Maria's light brown eyes, the light skin of Sef, Darim's angular face, and Altair's scar bisecting his mouth.

The feeling of being summoned is right, but this dream he finds himself in is too real for it. The man too familiar to not be made up by his mind. All that is familiar brought in from his past and injected into the events he's been following so closely in the present.

Malik sits next to the man regardless and stares right back. Hand reaching out to touch an arm that _feels_ solid and real, and he grips it tightly. Feeling life and skin under his fingers, and Malik finds he doesn't care anymore. Does not care that this is madness, that this is him breaking again as the man's lips curl up in a warm smile.

 _He's not alone_.

~

The hallucination is named Desmond, and Malik laughs at the subtle threads his mind is pulling together for this illusion. Malik watches the man in the brief moments that his bouts of madness last.

When Desmond speaks it's with a familiar accent despite the fact that the country they are in being so very far removed in both distance and time from Masyaf. He's a tired man being dragged though a war that he wants no part of. Desmond freely admits he had run from the Assassins to escape it all, and had fallen into Templar hands eventually. It bothers Malik. The insinuation that choice is being taken away in the Brotherhood. He has seen it though in the texts --physical and electronic-- over the years as the Templars solidify their upper hand on the world and the number of Assassins dwindles, but it has never sat well with him.

People are being pushed to become that which they should not be, and this Desmond is one of them. The man is unsuited for the life of an Assassin, and not only because he doesn't want to be one. There's a hesitation in him when he talks about killing. A buried regret that haunts his eyes as he shies away from it. Malik knows it, has seen it in many Novices he had to pull away from the path of an Assassin and push onto the path of a Rafiq. Not everyone is capable of killing, or are able to deal with the consequences of it.

Malik does not begrudge Desmond that, nor does he think less of him for it. The world would be an even darker place than it is now if everyone were capable of killing.

"I don't know why I keep coming here," Desmond says as he wanders the bare room. His fingers tracing patterns on the wall. The same patterns in the same place every time, and Malik wonders if there's something there he cannot see. "We escaped about three months ago."

"Where else would you be?" Malik asks, curious because this is the only area he knows Desmond to interact in.

"Well," Desmond stops wandering and frowns before he turns back to Malik. He smiles suddenly, and the ease of it is nothing that Malik has ever seen before in anyone else. "I always liked Jerusalem. Maybe there next time?"

It has been a while since Malik spent time in the city. The city as it exists now, or the city as he knew it best. He wonders if Desmond will change in the new setting or if his mind will keep the man the same. "That sounds acceptable."

~

Malik is stunned again when Desmond appears, because he does not come alone. The empty streets Malik has been wandering look the same but between one moment and the next they are filled with people.

Civilians, merchants, guards, beggars, and lepers deafen him and Malik stumbles to a bench. Sitting down hard as he watches the life that swells up around him. He's so caught up in it that he barely notices when Desmond sits next to him. "I liked it here better than anywhere else. Even Masyaf."

His voice is wistful and Malik blinks hard before swallowing. "I can't say the same."

He had grown up in Masyaf, and even when it had been hostile he had loved his home the most. He misses it still, but his trips there are brief when he can't avoid it. He reaches out to his right, Desmond always sits there when given the choice, and fits his fingers around Desmond's forearm. Gripping tight as ever. Fingers sliding down to feel the pulse of life in his veins that Malik thinks about sometimes in between these fits. Remembering how it felt to feel someone again, the buzzing thrill of it. Like the shocks he has experienced when fumbling with machines that use electricity.

"You were always here though," Desmond says in surprise, and Malik still can't quite pin down the time frame of his life Desmond claims to know. He fears asking outright, and lets it go.

"Not by choice," the emptiness at his left is familiar now. Malik has now lived without his arm far longer than he has lived with it. It still aches at times, less so than it did while he was alive. "My time here was an exile. A useful one, but still an exile."

"Very useful," Desmond agrees and ducks his head when Malik manages to tear his eyes away from the living streets. The sound of a hundred voices muting to something more comfortable and familiar to him. He holds his arm very still under Malik's hand and his eyes stick to the point almost as if he is as hungry for the touch as Malik.

It takes his breath away again. His encounters with Desmond always remind him of things he hasn't thought about in so long. The touch of another, the _desire_ of touching a lover is another new remembrance for him. It would be easy, so very easy to go further. Desmond is a reflection of Malik's wants, everything he has craved for far too long. He would not pull away if Malik were to try.

It does not change the fact that it would not be real though. Malik enjoys this, enjoys these moments, but he is too much himself still to allow it to go to that level.

"Yes, my ultimate goal in life, to be useful to bumbling Novices and disgraced Assassins," Malik lets go of Desmond but can't quite manage to look away from him or the smile that twists his lips up as he laughs.

There's an almost unnoticeable shift and Desmond stops laughing fast, regret in his eyes when he looks up and Malik has a moment to brace himself before the man leaves. The crowd leaves with him, and Malik is left alone on the bench in a ringing silence that seems greater now than ever before.

~

He cannot stop touching though no matter how often he tells himself he will not allow himself to fall that far. His fits are regular, they occur far more often than any of the summons had so long ago. Malik has plenty of chances to remind himself, and just as many chances to break his resolve.

And it does break. Every time when Desmond is in touching distance.

"No, no," Desmond mimes an action that Malik doesn't really follow. "A mortar grinds things up so it can be dissolved. A muddler breaks it up just enough to get the essence out without dissolving everything."

"If you say so," alcohol has evolved into an art form. Malik has seen enough to know that, but the intricacies of it don't really interest him as much as the obvious enthusiasm Desmond has for it.

The man is animated as he explains different drinks and how to make them. The city sings around them with shouts and cries that Malik hardly pays attention to anymore. He's far more interested in watching Desmond and tracing the black lines that have appeared on his left arm.

"Yeah, not sure if I really want to get this," Desmond stops talking about layers to hold his arm up more. He twists it and admires the marks. A tattoo, Malik had never been very interested in the growing fashion before. "Rebecca messed with the Animus so I can try it out first. What do you think?"

The lines are neat and sinuous. Overly dramatic with symbolism perhaps but it fits his skin well. "It suits you."

"Yeah?" Desmond's grin is self-conscious and Malik has long stopped comparing him to those he once knew. "Shaun says it's my drunk frat side showing."

"Hm," Malik doesn't stop touching and Desmond doesn't pull away. "And if I knew what that meant I am sure I might agree. It suits you Desmond, but that does not mean it is not a stupid idea."

Desmond throws his head back and laughs. Malik memorizes the sound, because these brief moments remind him what enough feels like.

~

Malik finds himself dreaming about Desmond. Hazy dreams where neither of them talk but are every bit as comforting as the hallucinations that come along more frequently as time passes. Dreams that spill out into his waking existence. Malik looking up from something meant to keep him busy and finding himself not alone. A ghostly vision of Desmond watching him but saying nothing. It's a comfort that he takes and damns himself for more and more.

~

"I've gone completely mad," Malik says as he walks the edge of sandy ground and water. It's the longest he's ever been in one of his episodes, and for the first time it is not Desmond who greets him when it starts. Malik finds himself on an island, and faced with a new face that he does and does not know.

Clay is nothing like the man he expected from the few things he learned from the reports. The man speaks rapid English, but does not mock the words Malik mispronounces as he talks back to this new figure. He seems unsurprised that Malik knows him though he's visibly suspicious.

"You're not crazy, you know that right? This is all actually happening," the man waves at the impossible island they're on. "I know crazy, man, and you're not it. Not sure exactly what you are though."

"Where is Desmond?" Malik asks after studying the man beside him. He's not sure that man is the correct word though. There's something off about him that Malik cannot place. More than the fact that parts of him seem to wink in and out of existence when he moves too quickly.

"In the past," Clay points his thumb at a shimmering wall of dark light. "Watching the last of Ezio and Altair's lives. Getting to the point where he can tear their memories out from his own and not have his brains leak out of his ears. Maybe even start going sane again."

"He is sane," Malik says. His certainty in a lot of things has been tested lately, and this new person, being, is pushing him further than he likes.

"No, he's really not. Neither am I," Clay says with a laugh that's sharp. "The Animus does a number on us all. Are you a program?"

"What?" Malik looks around at the vividly blue sky and the water that seems more real than any of the sea or oceans he's seen lately.

"A program, it's a-"

"I am aware what a program is," Malik finds little of interest in what he can see and turns back to Clay. "I existed before computers, and have watched them be created. I'm well aware of many things."

"Hey," Clay holds both hands up peaceably, but there's a sly hint of a grin on his face. "I've got some vague ideas on who you are, and very little on what you're doing here. Which is kind of off putting to think about. I'm supposed to know a lot more."

Clay blinks in and out of existence and Malik eyes him as he solidifies again. "Are you even real?"

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm not really sure," Clay tucks his hands into the openings of his clothing. Shrugging carelessly as he quotes something that sounds rehearsed, "Cogito ergo sum."

~

Malik wonders if he should have shared more of what he knew with Desmond. The things he has learned. The details of the people who had gone before him, the betrayal of Lucy that had been inevitable from the time Malik had seen her communication with Clay. A man who had been a number until then, and was very quickly dead after that. He wonders if it would have changed things, he wonders if maybe he would have started questioning things sooner had he tried.

Clay flits in and out of existence, Desmond pushes hard to relive the past, and Malik wanders alone. Thinking about the pointed words Clay makes sure to drop when he's here, and the way Desmond seems to be uncovering things that should be beyond Malik's mind to invent. How this is the most benign form of madness possible, and how that in and of itself should have been a sign he was not going mad.

"It's all real you know," Clay says as he makes a reckless move on their chess board. Either a gambit to cover some other plan, or him growing impatient with the game. Either is very likely. "And let me tell you how funny it is that the crazy man is telling you what's real and what's not."

It's brief moments that make Malik wonder. Clay's certainty, Desmond's increasingly desperate hold on Malik when he pauses long enough to rest. Does Malik even know what real is anymore?

~

After the island, finding himself back in Jerusalem is a shock. The world he has known for so long unreal when compared to the shifting landscape he has just left, and the sporadic appearance of Clay. Desmond's exhaustion and knowing looks as he'd lived to the sorry end of both of his ancestor's lives. His forehead pressing hard against Malik's back the one time he'd hesitantly brought up how Malik died. It seems more real than anything Malik has experienced in a good long while, and he realizes that he's starting to do more than question. He start to believe the things that Clay had said.

The apparition of a woman floating just off the the ground seems to seal it in his mind. Malik looks up at her and feels small under her haughty gaze. He does not like the feeling.

"You have a taste of what my prison has been like," the woman is nothing like anyone Malik has ever seen before, and her gaze freezes something inside of him. Her voice echoes and bounces off the silent walls. Seems to echo in his very mind itself as she judges him for some purpose only she knows. "You are useful, I will allow you to continue," the woman smiles in the brief seconds before she disappears, and it's filled with malice and is not something he ever wants to see again.

~

Malik is not going mad. He is not hallucinating when he is summoned, because Desmond is real. The things he speaks of in passing are happening. Time, nebulous and faulty in the world Malik lives in, is very real and counting down in Desmond's. Malik can see it in the lines that begin to crease Desmond's face, the bruises that begin to darken the skin under his eyes. He sees him more and more now. In the moments before a memory loads in the Animus, something close enough to a dream that Malik can reach out and touch him. Can feel the heat and life he had taken as fake under his hand, and know that its time is limited.

"Isolation is a terrible thing," Malik remarks as Desmond finishes speaking about the ghost of Juno and her venomous messages. His mind not on the woman at all, but fixed on the way he can reach out to Desmond now without losing anymore of his mind. "It can break anyone so very easily."

"She's dangerous, I," Desmond sighs and wanders around a broken pillar, but not far enough to break the hold Malik has on his wrist, "I don't think I'm going to survive this."

The words are soft and reluctant. A soft spoken truth that he does not want to face and Malik feels himself go cold. He is going to be alone again very soon.

~

 **I can be kind and merciful for those who serve me so well. You need not be alone in this.**

The words seem to fill the world, and etch themselves on his mind. The voice he knows from the one time he had seen the woman known as Juno. Hearing her voice again fills him with dread and he sits. His back sliding down the wall of the courtyard until he's resting on a few cushions. The words echoing in his mind ominously. 

He does not know everything, but he knows enough. He's not stupid enough not have picked up on the seriousness of the matter. The desperation from both sides to stop this coming devastation has ramped up to levels he's never seen before. The disaster is powerful and nigh unstoppable. It takes no special intelligence to know that the price to stop it would be high. That it would take a sacrifice.

It is why Malik has been denying the summons. Something he has never done before, but has been very easy to do.

Denying what he now knows is _real_. He once watched his own son pass into death before him, he once waited in vain for his closest friend to summon him again. Malik has not wanted to be subjected to that again. Not so soon after allowing himself to think that Desmond actually exists.

_Existed._

Juno's voice does not come again, but her triumph and sadistic glee had bled through in those few words. Malik sits and waits for the shock to wear off. For the grief he knows so well to come back. The grief the regret the anger the insanity he thought he had succumbed to again. It waits on the edges of his consciousness for him to only acknowledge it before it takes him.

He's stopped from making a decision by a figure falling through the grate.

Desmond looks fine, looks a little better than he had seen him last. There's a tightness around his eyes and mouth. A lingering pain, but otherwise he looks fine for a dead man. Desmond stands up and his eyes are locked on Malik. The brown showing almost all the way around from how wide they are. There's a muted disbelief as he walks forward.

"How long have you been here?" Desmond demands as he crouches and Malik watches his hand come up. The touch of solid fingers against his face is startling and Malik sucks in a deep breath as Desmond pushes forward. Not allowing him to jerk away. "Like this?" Desmond's eyes flick over his face and his voice is pleading, "Malik, answer me."

Malik reaches up and runs his hand up Desmond's. Turning his eyes to trace the stark black lines he knows so very well, because this is real. Desmond is real, has always been real. The shock wears off slowly, but the grief that comes is insignificant under the fierce and selfish joy he feels as he curls his hand around Desmond to anchor him here. To keep him with Malik.

"I thought I was finally going mad," Malik offers his explanation for want of anything else to say. Desmond listens intently. Drinking in his words like he always has, and Malik wonders how a man who had been alive in the world could have been so lonely as to reach out for him. "To imagine not being alone any longer. I _welcomed_ it, Desmond," more and more with each episode of his madness. With each word Desmond said, and each smile he gave. Every single time he allowed Malik to reach out and touch him. Even now, his fingers curl against Malik's cheek and he leans into it more. "Even knowing it was my own mind failing me I welcomed the respite. I relished the company, even if it was so utterly foreign. Anything was preferable to being so _alone_."

"Malik, _how_?" Desmond shifts forward and grasps his face with both hands, pulling his head up to look at him even though Malik can no longer look away.

"I don't know. It was," Malik has had too long to go over his memories, to think and wonder, "it was that _damned_ Apple."

That thing had never done anyone any good, and Malik loathes it. He skims his hand up Desmond's arm. Feeling the way warm skin gives to soft cloth before he has hold of Desmond's nape. It takes so very little force to pull him in even closer. Until Malik can rest their heads close, cheek to cheek, and feel Desmond's weight settle over him. Real and solid and _here_.

"Abbas couldn't use it," Desmond's voice is distant as he speaks. "It was too much for him."

"Swami," Malik spits out before laughing, because Desmond was there. Desmond has seen some of the best, some of the worst years of Malik's life. He should know this better than Malik. "The whore son kissed the shit Abbas walked on, he'd do anything for his master's approval! Though I know not what he did, or why I ended up like this."

"No one else?" Desmond asks and there's a stunned shock in his voice as his hands tighten, pulling until Malik is nearly buried in his body.

"I used to be able to reach out. To those I knew, to those who thought my name," the summons flit across his mind but Malik does not think he will experience them again. Desmond might though, and will need to know a bit more. Later. "In dreams or thought, I could touch them. For only a fraction of a moment."

Desmond shudders, and Malik feels the movement shake through him.

"I am not mad," Malik repeats the words that Clay had felt the need to say to him so often in their short acquaintance. His assurances more than empty words now and then.

"No, just dead," Desmond confirms and Malik can feel the way his cheek twitches under a smile.

Malik pulls back and laughs, because they're both dead. Desmond doesn't let go as Malik tries to put distance between them and they both go down in a tangle of limbs that Malik cannot find in him to mind. Desmond is smiling, wide and bright and Malik wants --suddenly and desperately-- to know everything. To know all the details of everything. Desmond, his life, the world he's so removed from, the past that he has lived, and the future he has saved. " _Tell_ me."

Desmond goes quiet and his eyes are solemn, but he doesn't ask questions and begins to talk. "I was born on a compound."

~

"I'm sorry," Desmond says much later, his hands are light as they trace something against the palm of his hand. The touch is still electric and Malik's tongue is weighed down with it. Desmond is lying again. There isn't a trace of sorrow in his face at all, and Malik will have to ask him now why he apologizes so often. "But I'm glad it happened. I wouldn't have made it without you."

Desmond has been brittle for a while. Malik remembers when he would see the ghost of the man staring at him from the courtyard at times. Eyes large and filled with a strange madness that only seemed to ebb when Malik would silently allow him to just exist. He remembers Clay's words, the experiences of a man whose mind was torn apart slowly. Piece by piece until there was nothing but lunatic ravings left.

Even on the island that kept both men sane, that madness had been apparent.

"I am glad too," Malik says eventually, and isn't even lying when he says it. He smirks up at Desmond who is staring at him with wide eyes. "Given the chance, I would not do it again, but I am glad that I was able to help you. That my suffering has not been entirely in vain."

He curls his hand and catches Desmond's fingers. There is still more to say, so much more to learn, but they have time for that and Malik isn't nearly so desperate now. Sleep allowing him enough time to process much of his shock. He brings his hand up and hesitates on habit --his reasons for not doing this are shot down fast because this is real-- before smirking. He presses a kiss to the fingers in his hand and watches as Desmond's fair cheeks fill slowly with a flush. His eyes fixing on him with no small amount of wonder. He knows Desmond better now at least, and the lack of names in his recital of life is very telling. Desmond has been alone for a long time.

"It will be easier now, for both of us I think," Malik allows Desmond to pull his hand away but only because the man is leaning forward.

His lips are soft and the sweetest thing Malik has tasted in a long while. Especially when he opens up so easily for his tongue. Malik takes Desmond's mouth slowly, paying attention to every detail as the man settles in against his side. A long line of heat and solidity that Malik will never take for granted. He parts reluctantly but the two hands in his hair do not allow him to get very far. 

Desmond is grinning, and his voice is breathless as he pushes closer, "Yeah? I think I can live with that."

It is not perfect, it is not remotely the best outcome for either of them, but this is enough for Malik. Finally.


End file.
